2016 Postmortem
Showing Original Post only (View all)Sanders supporters, do you still support him if he asks you to help pay for his policy platform? [View all]
One of the biggest criticism of Sanders is that he's pushing for a large expansion in government spending (free public college, universal health care, expanded Social Security, etc.) without specifying exactly how he's going to pay for it.
It's an absolutely fair question to ask whether people who support universal health care are actually willing to help pay for it. Look at Vermont where universal health care was ultimately too expensive for people to swallow. Look at people complaining about the Cadillac tax or how their ACA plan costs more because of benefits they don't use (by design, ACA gets the insured to subsidize the uninsured, men to subsidize women and the young to subsidize the old). Seems that people want universal health care in principle but not so much the paying part.
Sure he makes some vague references to a financial transaction tax (but of course the devil is in the details such as is he going to subject pension plans and 401k's to the tax? is the tax going to raise as much money as he thinks?) and raising the FICA cap (how does that change the benefits to people who pay more when they retire? Why does he have a donut hole below $250k?) and increased taxes on the 1% or corporations.
So, let's assume that Sanders has already risen taxes significantly on the rich and corporations and finds out that he needs more money. if Sanders proposes paying for his platform through something that affects you directly (you have to pay significantly higher taxes without getting net benefits), will you still support him? Let's say you're nearing retirement and he wants to pay for free college by taxing your pension or 401-k or Social Security. Or let's say you're a fresh graduate and he wants to pay for universal health care or expanded Social Security by raising your federal income taxes.
Here's the tax rates for Denmark
https://www.cfe-eutax.org/taxation/personal-income-tax/denmark
1 USD is about 6.5 DKK.
0%: Up to 41 000 DKK
37.48%: 41 001 279 800
43.48%: 279 801 335 800
59%: 335 801 and over